The vast polycentric territories known as the Spanish Monarchy, expanded through the dynastic policies of the Habsburgs and stretched across the European continent and overseas, gave its diverse subjects, bound by religion and a distant government apparatus, possibilities of movement that allowed for imminent personal and social changes, whether in pursuit of what they thought could lead to their well-being or as an escape from that which they perceived caused them harm. The geopolitical expansion of the early modern period, intrinsically linked to both the emergent humanist understanding of past cultures and the external world, in turn fomenting self-knowledge and interiority, opened increasing opportunities for men and women of all ranks to attain an unprecedented sense of intellectual and physical freedom. While most who traveled did so on account of concrete human needs, the awareness of new worlds so recently within reach nevertheless awakened many to the realization of their potential advancement and transformation.

One of the corollaries of increased mobilization was the consolidation of the Spanish Monarchy under the Habsburg emperor Charles V. With the European counterparts of Flanders and the Aragonese kingdoms of Sardinia, Sicily, and Naples already under his rule, the recently colonized territories further extended the empire's global reach. Yet the human consequences of these migratory movements would weigh heavily on history, as they incited indigenous resistance, material exploitation, and the imposition of slavery, all the while spreading Christianity and promoting cultural transference.

The genre known as the Spanish picaresque takes its name from its protagonist, the pícaro, a literary character that first appeared in the anonymous novel Lazarillo de Tormes (1554). Despite its brevity, the seemingly simple little text, narrated in the first person by a lower-class good-for-nothing, profoundly altered the course of Spanish literary history by generating a new kind of prose fiction. Although the term pícaro itself was applied only to Mateo Alemán’s Guzmán de Alfarache (1599, 1604) – the word never appears in the Lazarillo, whereas Guzmán was actually referred to as the Libro del pícaro – the relationship between the two novels was clearly established by their similar autobiographical structure and satirical style, which attracted an extensive readership. Lazarillo’s four extant editions, published the same year in four important trade centers (Alcalá de Henares, Burgos, Medina del Campo, and Antwerp), had already proven its popularity; even more remarkably, the first part of Guzmán saw 24 editions within six years (Howard Mancing, “Guzmán de Alfarache and After” 40).

When constructing the literary canon, nineteenth-century scholars endeavored to codify the picaresque genre’s salient characteristics, notably those most evident in the three early modern texts that quickly assumed top ranking: Lazarillo de Tormes, Guzmán de Alfarache, and Francisco de Quevedo’s El Buscón (1604; first published in 1626). This new genre radically challenged the chivalric and sentimental novels then in vogue with its vivid realism, enhanced by its first-person narration, an ironic reflection on morality, stress on material existence, and social criticism. Its distinctive style thus differed fundamentally from previous Spanish literary fiction, whose omniscient accounts of the amorous and military exploits of aristocratic heroes stressed their dualistic morality and conservative ideology. In contrast, the picaresque genre’s first-person narrative imposed a singular perspective from the pícaro’s lower-class point of view, while its ironic tenor raised immediate doubts as to the narrator-protagonist’s reliability (Francisco Rico, The Spanish Picaresque).

Yet these features have had a long literary history, appearing in various kinds of writings. While modern studies of genre theory have reconceptualized prose narratives into more specific categories, it is well to remember that, short of religious texts, early modern readers were rarely concerned with such distinctions; indeed, in Spain, as Lía Schwartz explains in her study of satire, theory was developed post-factum (Lía Schwartz Lerner, “Golden Age” 282).

The recent research on Spanish women writers has revived interest in several poets whose works, until recently, have remained unknown, such as Leonor de Pimentel, newly discovered by Trevor Dadson when, in search of the poetry of Diego de Silva y Mendoza, Count of Salinas, he came across the count's young lover's witty responses to his ‘motes’ and other poems with rhymes of her own. Although edited in the early twentieth century, the works of another woman poet, Catalina Clara Ramírez de Guzmán, born in 1618 in Llerena (Extremadura), have been forgotten for almost a century. Her poetry was first collected in two Spanish manuscripts and published in 1929 by Joaquín de Entrambasaguas. The most recent and much improved edition, dated 2010, is by Aránzazu Borrachero Mendíbil and by Karl McLaughlin, a student of Trevor Dadson, who began his research on Ramírez de Guzmán under Dadson's guidance.

As is the case for most women writers of early modern Spain, little is known about Ramírez de Guzmán, although Borrachero Mendíbil and McLaughlin summarise what has been discovered about her family in the Llerena town archives. Catalina Clara's roots in the town hark back at least to her maternal grandparents, since her grandfather, a member of the lower nobility, held numerous administrative positions there. Her paternal grandfather, related to the influential Ramírez de Prado family, would also gain social and political prestige. Catalina Clara's widowed grandmother was known for her business acumen, as she owned a mill and other houses in the town of Fuente de Cantos that she rented to local farmers; she also founded a chapel in the local church and donated considerable sums to the convents where her daughters professed. Far less is known about Catalina Clara's mother, Isabel Sebastiana de Guzmán, save that she gave birth to eleven children, six of whom survived. We know much more about her father: he held numerous important posts in Llerena, and travelled frequently to Madrid in order to defend the town's interest at court. As an important government figure, including that of the town's regidor, he maintained cordial relations with Llerena's most influential townspeople. Yet he also fought numerous skirmishes with local adversaries, which, when two of his sons applied for positions with the Inquisition, led to the unproven accusation against the family of being Jewish conversos.